Dale is taking a bit longer than most to warm up to us but he's slowly coming around. With continued socialization he'll be just fine!
Update Jan 27, 2015: We are continuing to medicate Dale and are working to determine the cause of his illness. Right now he mostly stabilizes while on antibiotics but crashes shortly after coming off them. Unless you have a lot of rat experience and a big pocketbook, it's probably best that Dale stay here for now.
Jul 27, 2015: The decision was made to help Dale over the bridge. At this point he was no longer improving with antibiotics and was on a constant decline toward death. Once he was no longer able to consistently stand it was time.
Following are videos posted to try and help with diagnosis.
This is on January 25th when we started him on amoxi again.
Throughout this video you can see his lack of grasping & holding any food. When he eats the block he presses it against the floor to grind some off rather than holding it.
You will probably have to watch the next one a few times but watch at the very beginning how he completely misses the syringe. Near the end you can see him grasping underneath it.